Sony
has long been working on a new generation of displays that are
flexible enough to be bent and shaped around an object. The first of
these flexible OLED displays to be seen from Sony surfaced
in 2007. The display offered 16.7 million colors and was 0.3mm
thick with a resolution of 160 x 120 and a 1,000:1 contrast
ratio.

Sony has now announced a new breakthrough in flexible
OLED displays that puts the 2007 unveiling to shame. The new
screen that Sony has debuted is only 80nm thick and can be
rolled around a pencil while displaying images on screen. The screen
measures 4.1-inches and is a full color display. To create such a
thin display, Sony used a new organic semiconductor material it
developed called peri-Xanthenoxanthene (PXX).

PXX is important
to the breakthrough because it is stable when exposed to oxygen,
moisture, light, and heat. It also has an improved current modulation
of eight-times compared to conventional organic semiconductor
material pentacene. The new display is also the first flexible
organic thin-film transistor (OTFT) that uses an integrated flexible
gate-driver circuit.

The integrated flexible gate-drive is key
because it allowed the removal of the ridged driver IC chips used in
other displays. The design process also uses new organic insulators
that can be formed in the atmosphere requiring fewer steps to produce
making the construction process less time consuming and more
efficient compared to traditional vacuum semiconductor
processes.

Sony claims that the flexible display can be
repeatedly rolled up to a radius of 4mm and stretched as many as
1,000 times without degradation in the ability to show moving images.
The display can show over 16.7 million colors, has a contrast ratio
of around 1,000:1, and a peak luminance of 100 cd/m2.

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